


glass fragments in the light

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst and Tragedy, Break Up, Character Study, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Poe Dameron Hurts So Prettily, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Psychological Trauma, Sad Ending, there is no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:15:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23123098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Poe is alright during the war, he has to be, there's no time to break down, but then the war finishes and there's no where else to run anymore. Poe doesn't just break, he shatters and sometimes it's not enough to have someone try put him together again.orPoe Dameron is really afraid of Force-users
Relationships: Poe Dameron & Jessika Pava, Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 5
Kudos: 103





	glass fragments in the light

**Author's Note:**

> hahaha I just want to apologise in advance for this bc it is honestly just pure fucking misery for 2723 words. theres no happy ending everyone is just fucked up. its kinda disjointed bc this was actually one of the directions I was thinking abt taking how to become the spark and I ended up scrapping it for something much happier and hopeful. think of this as poe's 'bad end' where he never lets himself heal. what I will say is that for poe breaking up with Finn is probably the best option for his mental health at this point u can't date someone who constantly triggers ur mental health issues as sad as that is :( 
> 
> also WARNING: there is graphic description of panic attacks, allusions to suicide and just general unhealthy behaviour/coping mechanisms. if this is triggering in any way pls don't read this fic take care of urself first ok!

It’s just a random day, Poe has a day on planet in-between his non-stop missions, and Rey and Finn manage to scrape up enough time to have lunch with him in the mess hall. It’s nice to be able to spend some time together, even in the middle of a war, to be able to just relax for once in a while. They’re just talking, Poe joking about something funny that happened in his last mission when he feels it and all the life drains out of his limbs.

“Get out of my head,” he doesn’t even realise he’s shouting until he hears his voice echo in the sudden quiet of the mess hall, “get out of my kriffing head.”

His hands are shaking around his plate and he can _feel_ her shifting around in his mind as she leaves, and it smashes against the ground. People are staring, people are looking in horror as Commander Dameron is losing his mind in public apparently. He doesn’t care, he doesn’t care at all because all he can see is that First Order interrogation cell, Kylo Ren’s cold gloved hand prying his skull open.

“Don’t ever – don’t you ever fucking do that again,” he shouts, one hand pointing at Rey and the other clutching at his hair, “don’t ever go in my head. Ever. Do you hear me? Do you understand?”

She nods, pale and shell-shocked, trying to formulate the words to apologise, to say something, but Poe is already losing it. He’s breathing too fast. He can’t stay here. He can’t stand still. The walls are all closing in. Someone grabs his arm and he flinches away so hard he almost knocks into the table behind him.

“Don’t,” he says, voice just a hoarse whisper, “just don’t touch me. Please don’t.”

He runs, doesn’t know where, but he can hear BB-8’s whirring following him and he goes, tearing through the base until he’s standing in the middle of the Ajan Kloss jungle. He hunches over behind a tree, trying to slow his breathing, ground himself. He thought he was doing okay, thought he was getting better, but this is just the same as he was last year. He grips his own arms so hard he knows it’ll leave bruises, but he can’t find it in himself to care.

Eventually he hears footsteps quietly moving towards him in the undergrowth and he knows it’s Finn without even having to look up. No one would move as carefully as that, stepping around sprouts and new growths. He sighs, tension slowly leaking out of his shoulders.

“Poe,” he whispers, “BB-8 brought me here. Is it alright if I sit with you for a little bit?”

He nods and the two of them just sit there in silence, surrounded by the gentle roar of the jungle. It takes him a while to be able to lift his head let alone look Finn, but he’s just leaning against a tree and looking up at the canopy like this is the only thing in the whole galaxy he wants to be doing. Sitting with Poe in the mud.

“I’m sorry,” he starts and Finn’s eyes are on him in a second, burning with their intensity, “I freaked out a little bit.”

“It’s alright, Poe,” Finn says with a small smile, reaching a hand out and Poe takes it cautiously, like he’s scared it’s going to bite him, but the warmth of his palm is soothing, “Rey shouldn’t have done that. It was an accident, but she still shouldn’t have.”

“I just – it felt like Kylo Ren was in my head again,” he says and he feels sick at how his voice goes all wet so quickly, “I was just so powerless. I couldn’t do anything to stop her. If she wanted to, she could’ve done anything she wanted in there and I know she won’t, but just the fact that she could – that she was in there it–” his voice breaks and he has to hunch up again for a few seconds to get his breathing under control, “it scares me, Finn. It scares me a lot. The Force, Force users. I don’t know if I can ever trust someone who has that kind of power.”

When he looks up again there’s some unreadable emotion on Finn’s face that shifts away as soon as he notices Poe is looking at him again. He wants to question it, but he doesn’t have to energy right now. He’s just tired, tired down to his very bones.

“Will you take me home?” he asks quietly and Finn pulls him to his feet gently, always gently. The way Finn holds him like he’s about to shatter, always looking at him for permission when he carefully pulls him close to walk them back through the forest and towards base again. It fills Poe with something that he thinks is the closest to love he’ll ever get again.

* * *

The war is over, it’s been over for months and the waves of celebration have faded away to the slow drudgery of trying to piece the galaxy together again. Poe is mostly holding everything together, the Resistance, whatever the kriff is left of the New Republic, and it should be better than it is. They’ve won, this is a victory, but it feels less and less like it every single day.

He sighs, rubbing his hands over his face and Kaydel gives him a sympathetic look from across the command centre. He’s no diplomat, nothing as good as Leia was. He feels more and more like he’s drowning the darkness of her shadow, maybe Holdo was right, maybe he’s just some hotshot flyboy. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, everyday feels like he’s just stumbling around in the dark, making the right decisions purely by luck. He guesses that since nothing has gone majorly wrong yet he must be doing something right, at least that’s what he hopes. 

It doesn’t help that Finn and Rey have been trailing around the galaxy on some secret mission that apparently even the other general of the Resistance can’t know about. They’ve taken BB-8 with them as well because Rey seemed like she needed it more than Poe did at the time, but he misses his little droid more than he admits.

He just wants someone he can talk to and every time he thinks that he instinctively makes that turn to where Snap and Karé’s tent is pitched and has to freeze dead in place. Snap is gone, Snap is dead, Snap died before reinforcements came, before he knew that they stood a chance. He died thinking that the Resistance was crumbling around them, terrified and afraid. He died thinking that they had failed.

He still has other friends, of course he does, but Jess (or Commander Pava as she makes him call her now) is away so often, Karé is mourning much more than he is and Iolo and Bastian have gone on a long overdue honeymoon. Maybe he doesn’t have as many friends as he thought he did after all. Poe has always used his smile as much as a shield as anything else, a charismatic mask that keeps people just far enough that they don’t see how tired he really is.

“General,” someone says too loudly, running into the command centre. Poe smiles up at them on instinct even though he wants to crawl under his desk and scream for a little bit, “General Finn and Rey are back.”

He springs up and Kaydel just snorts and waves him off like he’s an overenthusiastic recruit that she’s dismissing. He goes, trying his best not to run because it’s been two weeks and kriff he’s missed them all. The Falcon is familiar hulking over the ships on the flight strip, just a few X-Wings, most of the rest of them are out or in the hangar. His heart pangs a little at the thought of his own precious ship sitting quiet and neglected in the hangar.

BB-8 runs screaming towards him, spinning around his legs so fast that he gets dizzy trying to keep track of where it’s going and what it’s saying. It tells him everything that’s happened in one unbroken sentence that only ten years of companionship allows Poe to understand.

“Nice to see you too,” he grins, squatting down and patting BB-8’s round little head, “they treat you well out there?”

_‘Affirmative, Hero-Rey and Hero-Finn protected BB-8 and ensured no damage was sustained, Friend-Poe has no reason to worry this time.’_

“Poe,” he spins when he hears Finn’s voice and he runs into his arms like some lovesick idiot, it’s alright though because Finn clings onto him just as tightly.

“I missed you, buddy,” he says and he tries not to choke with embarrassment at how thick his voice has gotten all of a sudden, it’s only been two weeks for Force’s sake, but they’ve been hard. Poe hasn’t gotten much sleep, negotiations with a previously independent world that had been taken over by the First Order have been stalling and Finn has always been better at diplomacy than he has.

“You look tired,” Finn says quietly, ducking his head down and pressing a soft kiss to Poe’s lips, just a feather-light touch, “haven’t been sleeping well?”

“Just a lot going on you know,” he tries to shrug it off, but he’s always been a bad liar especially when Finn’s eyes are boring into his own with that bright intensity, “I missed you, it’s been hard doing this by myself.”

Finn stiffens in his arms, eyes skirting away all of a sudden and something feels off. Poe glances around and he sees Finn staring at where Rey is standing, talking to Jess and laughing about something and he tries not to think about what he’s thinking about. He trusts Finn, he really does, but he also doesn’t like these secrets.

“I’m back now anyways,” Finn says with a smile, shrugging Poe’s arms off and pulling them towards base, “what’s going on now? Another problem we can’t just shoot at, general?”

“Kriff if I could just fly out and shoot all our problems away then I wouldn’t be staying up all night working,” Poe jokes wryly, something weird still niggling at him, but he chooses to ignore it, “c’mon I’ll bring you up to speed.”

* * *

“Poe, I have the Force,” Finn says, sitting quietly in their shared room. Poe doesn’t breathe for a second. “It’s what I wanted to tell Rey, I didn’t want to freak you out I just – I’ve been training with her, I didn’t want to be here in case I couldn’t control it and I hurt you. I didn’t want to scare you.”

Poe shouldn’t be scared, not of Finn, not of his kind thoughtful Finn who’s looking at him with big worried eyes and his hands trembling in his lap to stop himself from reaching out. He shouldn’t be, logically he knows that Finn will never hurt him, but trauma isn’t logical. All he can see is a black gloved hand reaching out towards him, the cold of the torture chair he’s trapped into, the feeling of someone else prying through his head.

“No,” he shakes his head, trying to get out, get it out,” no, no, no, Finn you’re – you can’t be – that’s,” he stares at Finn’s terrified expression and he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe. He runs. Finn doesn’t try to follow him.

Jess finds him, hunched in the cockpit of his X-Wing trying to remember the goddamn breathing exercises Kalonia had taught him, but nothings working. Nothing works because every time he starts calming down he remembers that Finn has the Force, Finn is a Force-user and the panic rises up again uncontrollably. He just shakes, tired. He’s so goddamn tired.

“Poe,” she says, quiet and hesitant, crouched on a wing and reaching a tentative hand towards him, “Poe breathe with me, alright? In with me, out with me. It’s alright, I’m here.”

He obeys, blindly grabbing her hand and not letting go until the world stop seeming to spin so fast around him. He blinks at her afterwards, taking in her messy hair and her pyjamas and the sleepy smile she gives him when she notices him looking.

“Did Finn come and get you?” he asks, voice rough and low. He almost doesn’t recognise himself, not what he sounds like and rarely in the mirror, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she says and he can tell she means it even though she hates being woken up, “I’d do anything for you, Poe, this isn’t a burden – you’re not one either.”

“I’m a little fucked up in the head though,” he laughs, weary, barely joking. He’s not really.

“We all are,” she squeezes his hand for a moment to make sure he’s still listening, “but you went through a lot more than most of us, most people would be a lot less okay than you are right now. You’re doing pretty good, Poe.”

“I’m sitting in an X-Wing cockpit having a panic attack at 3am,” he smiles weakly, “what’s doing badly then?”

“Dead,” she says bluntly and he only flinches a little bit because he could be dead as well, he could die, kill himself, whatever, but he hasn’t yet and maybe that makes him strong, but maybe that makes him stupid, “you’re still with the Resistance, you haven’t left even though you could’ve, you could’ve gone back to Yavin, gone home. A lot of people have, the war’s over they think, but you’re still here, you still believe we can have something bigger than just peace. That’s brave, that’s more than doing pretty good in my opinion.”

He just sighs, slumps forwards so his head can rest on the tops of his knees. “I think I fucked up – with Finn, but I can’t help it, I’m scared. I – I know he won’t ever hurt me, not on purpose, but it’s like – it’s like someone has a loaded blaster up to your head and they tell you to trust that they won’t pull the trigger. I know he won’t, but what if one day his finger just slips. I can’t deal with that – I’m not alright enough to deal with that.”

“Then you don’t have to, Poe,” she says even though she doesn’t really understand what he’s talking about, not fully anyways, but it’s enough, “sometimes we hurt each other when we don’t mean it and sometimes we’re not okay enough to deal with that. I know you love him, Poe, but you have to think about yourself as well. If you can’t rely on him, if you’re scared for whatever reason then maybe you’re not ready for this and it’s okay.”

He thinks about it, thinks long and hard even when he’s back in his shared room with Finn and it’s cold and empty. He sleeps on it, wakes up with it, rolls it back and forth in his head like two marbles in his hand. Smooth and cold and reliable.

“I think we should break up,” he says the words to Finn that he never said to Muran, never got the chance to, “it’s – I’m sorry I thought I could do this, but I can’t. It isn’t your fault, this is all me, I just – I wouldn’t be able to deal with you hurting me right now, even if it’s an accident. I need to – to be more okay, I need to put myself first.”

Finn looks at him, eyes soft and understanding and Poe hates it, hates that he has to do this even though he loves him. All he wants to do is fall into Finn’s arms and kiss him, fall asleep next to him and then wake up to his sleepy smiles and sloppy morning kisses, but he can’t.

“I still love you,” he says, voice breaking, “but I need to deal with a whole lot of things first, things that I couldn’t sort out properly in the war.”

“It’s alright, Poe,” Finn replies, hands twitching to reach out for him, “I understand.”

“Don’t wait for me,” is the last thing he says before Finn gets on the shuttle to Corsucant, their general, their representative. He goes and Poe doesn’t watch the ship disappear. 

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT: kinda weird to jump back on this but I was in like a kinda bad mindset when I wrote this and its the kind of angst for angst's sake that honestly im not rlly proud of as a writer. I feel like I haven't done these characters or this idea actual justice especially Finn. he deserves better than essentially to be a plot progression. it feels very weird for me to see this become one of my most popular fics over ones that I've put significantly more heart, effort and time into and it just doesn't feel right for me. and ik that seems dumb but im just a small creator and getting 1k+ hits on a fic is a pretty big deal to me and to get it on something that I dont rlly even like doesn't feel very good. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to orphan this or just straight up delete it but idk I just wanted to make this clear. I'm also sorry if anyone was hurt by this it's honestly one of the few things that I genuinely regret posting


End file.
